BusinessWeek on "Chindia"
BusinessWeek's latest issue is almost completely devoted to China
and India - over 70 printed pages and more on-line. Their huge potential,
their appetite, their challenges. I have met two of the prime authors - Pete
Engardio, based in NYC (but spent years in Hong Kong and other parts of
As I leafed through the issue and some of the data they quote (from various
research firms) I found my mind brimming with burning questions:
1) Is the West prepared to absorb $ 2 trillion in exports from the 2
countries expected in 2010, almost triple what it is today?
2) Are China and India prepared to import at least $ 1.8 trillion a year in
return so we do not end up with massive trade wars or dramatically reduce 1 above?
(By the way a $ 1 trillion in Middle Eastern oil imports would not be a good
answer to this question).
3) How many US and European companies are aggressively innovating
and moving up the "stack" in their product value chain?
4) How many US and European companies are gearing up to aggressively
export to these countries as GE is?
5) What are government and corporations doing to retrain western labor
force to support 3. and 4?
6) Can western labor for "utility" (as against innovation) work be
made more competitive with technology (like Jetblue with VoIP)
or as wage inflation grows in
7) What impact will
8) Will Indian and Chinese companies learn to quickly build strong
management teams in US and
9) If
10) If
Lots of questions - hopefully lots of people smarter than me around the world are asking similar questions and coming up with answers. We have to thank Pete, Manjeet and the rest of the BW crew for stimulating this discussion. And introducing the term "Chindia" to Google.
Author's Note: Manjeet Kripalani at BusinessWeek corrects me and says they did not come up with the term "Chindia" - see her comment below. Nice and modest of her.
Nice of you to blog us, Vinnie! But one correction. BusinessWeek did not introduce the word Chindia to the world. Jairam Ramesh did - he wrote a book on it released this April. Then CLSA followed it up with a big
India-China report called Chindia, released in June. BusinessWeek is just a follower here! So maybe we will popularize the term internationally (people in India use it commonly already), but Jairam
innovated it!
Posted by: Manjeet Kripalani | August 17, 2005 at 11:46 PM
Manjeet - have you not heard the expression "walk in someone else's shoes for a mile.....then run like hell so they cannot get their shoes back!" Somehow I have a feeling you will be associated with the term for a while now...
Nice of you to point out who deserves the credit for the term.
Posted by: Vinnie Mirchandani | August 17, 2005 at 11:55 PM
thought you would like to know this, chindia is also the name of a watchtower in Romania, which is a popular tourist spot there. It seems it is the place where Vlad, the king on whom the Dracula legend is based, used to watch the impalings of his citizens from.
Posted by: shijith | November 13, 2005 at 11:03 PM
Not long ago, China and India were emerging economies and are now on the verge of 'super' status. Will they give their brothers and cousins in Africa a leg up economically, or will they continue to treat emerging nations simply as places to extract raw materials from?
Posted by: Tom Nevin | September 04, 2006 at 01:39 PM
Tom, not any time soon, I would say. According to CIA Fact Book, 60% of India and 50% of China's population is in agriculture - dated technology and practices, continuting only 15% or so of GDP. Till they fix that problem, they should not be trying to help others. But what is stopping African countries from emulating India/China - learning from them?
Posted by: vinnie mirchandani | September 04, 2006 at 01:51 PM
http://www.asiaing.com/magazine/businessweek-magazine/china-and-india-what-you-need-to-know-now.html
Used "Businessweek on Chindia". Is it OK?
Posted by: Asia Lu | April 04, 2007 at 10:50 PM